In the Social Economy ambit in Spain exist different types of entities:

Cooperatives

Labour Societies

Mutuals

Insertion Companies

Brotherhoods of fishermen

Employment Centers.

Among them, I want to introduce you to the Labour Insertion Companies in Spain.

First of all, a general definition… “The Insertion Companies, were born as an instrument to fight poverty and social exclusion. They’re business initiatives combining business logic with methodologies employment in the same company, in a foreign company or self-employment projects. These companies are not immune to the conventional processes of the economy, since producing goods and services, improve the environment, enhance services to individuals and enhance the quality of life, remain profitable and competitive. In addition to assessing its economic efficiency it is very important to emphasize profitability over the social aspects, since the beneficiaries are no longer passive and dependent people and contribute to society all that it had been denied”.

Because it’s an instrument of social exclusion, the recipients are people in situations of exclusion who are inactive or unemployed and having significant difficulties to accessing employment, like:

Recipients of minimum insertion income

Long-term unemployed

Young people who have not completed the period of compulsory education and are unemployed

Ex-drug addicts who are in the process of rehabilitation and social reintegration.

Prison inmates and ex-inmates unemployed

Other groups such as: ethnic minorities, immigrants or people with unshared family responsibilities and in situations of exclusion.

These companies offer them an itinerary which consists in a plan for achieving integration into the regular labor market:

1. Welcome service and advice: The situation of the person is diagnosed

2. Individualized Plan work

3. Employment pre-workshops: Recovering the necessary learning that they already had

4. Workshops labor specialization: Perfection of knowledge and skills

5. Insertion Company: It puts into practice what they learned in the previous phases

6. Entry into the regular labor market.

For this reason, the permanence of these people in insertion companies is temporary, since it is not intended to create permanent jobs but to train and empower people to find a job by themselves.

What are the requirement to create an insertion company?

* Being affiliated at less 51% of the share capital by a social organization or nonprofit entity* Be between its workers a percentage of workers insertion. Depending on each region will range between 30% and 60%* Apply at least 80% of the results obtained or the available surplus in each financial year to the improvement or expansion of productive structures and insertion.

The regulation for the Insertion Companies in Spain is the: “Law 44/2007, of December 13, for regulating the system of integration enterprises”, but there are several decrees to each regional level.